The
television program The Cost of Abortion in United
States of America (USA) was
produced
by Saint
Michael's Media in 2008.

Although
Saint Michael's Media is a religious
organization, The
Cost of Abortion
is not in any way a religious program. It is a purely secular, economic
program, addressing the problem of abortion in a direct way – how much
does abortion cost?

Abortion
does have a price tag –
and that price tag, even in
purely economic terms, is too high.
As Michael Voris, the presenter of the program, says during the show
“If you can't see it for the
children, see it for the money!”

Obviously,
the cost of abortion
is greater than mere money –
but the financial issue is one which must be explored. Bad
morality makes bad economic policy, and the economic impact of abortion
on the USA is just one of the hundreds of reasons that it must
be stopped.

If you would like to purchase
a DVD copy of the show, you can
do
so here.

The
economic cost of abortion is
something which is difficult to assess. There are many choices for the
economist to make – should it be measured as a lowering of gross
domestic product? Taxation revenue? Average wage? A specific and
limited damage to specific industries (such as toys, diapers, child
medical care etc. etc.) pertaining to childhood? For various reasons,
we have chosen to concentrate on gross domestic product (GDP).

GDP is
one of the best indicators
of economic activity for a nation as a whole. It does not describe
economic movement totally and there are issues with using it, but it
remains one of simplest and easiest figures to understand. In addition,
figures for GDP are readily available and the term is often used in
lay-economics and the popular media.

We began
by obtaining the figures
for the total numbers of surgical abortions carried out in the United
States since 1973 to 2007 (the last year when figures were available).
We then assumed (based on simple logic and population distribution)
that half of those aborted babies would be female and that – at age 25
– each would have an average of a single child (based on CDC figures).

Combining
these calculations
allowed us to generate a running total of “missing persons” from the
USA. This total was presented for each year from 1973 to 2007 inclusive.

It was
then a simple matter to
calculate how much these “missing persons” would have contributed to
the GDP of the USA by taking the GDP per capita of the USA for each
year and multiplying it by the number of “missing persons” so far. Note
that the figure is not the persons who were “made missing” (i.e.
aborted or not born in) in that year, but rather the total
number of missing persons since 1973. These individuals would ALL have
been contributing to the GDP of the nation.

A simple
sum of the figures of
lost GDP from 1973 to 2007 inclusive resulted in a total figure for
lost GDP due to surgical abortion between 1973 and 2007. Then, a simple
multiplication allowed us to convert year 2000 US$ (which were the GDP
figures we had) into year 2007 US$ in order to give an accurate figure.
The final total is shown on the spreadsheet – it is somewhere in the
region of $37 trillion.

Q
: Is it reasonable to
assume that all women would have had a child at age 25?

It is
not – but that is not what
we assume. We assume that, on average each woman would have had
one child by age 25. The average age for a woman to have her first
child was 25.1 years in 2004 – a figure which was roughly four years
lower in 1970. Accordingly, there will be women who would have had two
or more children by the age of 25, and some who would have had none.
Bear in mind also that the figure of 25.1 years is due in no small part
of the simple fact of abortion in the USA.

Like
many of our calculations,
this is an assumption – as there are no hard figures available for how
murdered individuals would have acted. The 25.1 year figure is for live
births - not abortions. The figure for viable pregnancies
will be much lower.

Q
: Is it reasonable to
assume that all aborted babies would have lived for the full 34 years
covered by your calculations?

It is
not – although we have done
so in order to streamline the math. Based on CDC statistics, roughly
98% of persons born in 1973 (live births) are still alive today (2007 –
the last year for which figures are available). It would be reasonable
to reduce the final figure by 2% because of this.

However, our figures do not take
into account the fact that non-surgical abortions (including deliberate
abortions carried out by such things as “the morning-after pill”) are
also abortions and are not included in the total. These figures would,
if included, raise our calculations significantly. However, no hard
data are available for these abortions. Accordingly, we have
streamlined the math in a number of ways.